SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/12/2014
8:59 AM
My Worship Time Focus: The City’s
Destruction PT-3
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Lamentations
2:18-22
Message of the
verses: We will look at the last
section of chapter two in our SD today.
The Plea for Help (Lamentations 2:18-22): “18 Their heart cried out to the Lord, "O
wall of the daughter of Zion, Let your tears run down like a river day and
night; Give yourself no relief, Let your eyes have no rest. 19 "Arise, cry aloud in the night At the
beginning of the night watches; Pour out your heart like water Before the
presence of the Lord; Lift
up your hands to Him For the life of your little ones Who are faint
because of hunger At the head of every street." 20 See, O LORD, and look!
With whom have You dealt thus? Should women eat their offspring, The little
ones who were born healthy? Should priest and prophet be slain In the sanctuary
of the Lord? 21 On the ground in the streets Lie young and old; My virgins and
my young men Have fallen by the sword. You have slain them in the day of Your anger, You have slaughtered, not
sparing. 22 You
called as in the day of an appointed feast My terrors on every side; And there
was no one who escaped or survived In the day of the LORD’S anger. Those whom I bore and reared, My
enemy annihilated them.”
Let us begin by looking at a couple of verses from the
books of Levities and Deuteronomy. “27
’Yet if in spite of this you do not obey Me, but act with hostility against Me,
28 then I will act with wrathful
hostility against you, and I, even I, will punish you seven times for your
sins. 29 ’Further, you will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your
daughters you will eat (Lev. 26:27-29).”
“53 “Then you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of
your sons and of your daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, during
the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you. 54 “The man
who is refined and very delicate among you shall be hostile toward his brother
and toward the wife he cherishes and toward the rest of his children who
remain, 55 so that he will not give even one of them any of the flesh of his
children which he will eat, since he has nothing else left, during the siege
and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you in all your towns. 56 “The
refined and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of
her foot on the ground for delicateness and refinement, shall be hostile toward
the husband she cherishes and toward her son and daughter, 57 and toward her
afterbirth which issues from between her legs and toward her children whom she
bears; for she will eat them secretly for lack of anything else, during the
siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you in your towns (Deut.
28:53-37).” “1 "So it shall be when
all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have
set before you, and you call them to mind in all nations where the LORD your
God has banished you, 2 and you return
to the LORD your God and obey Him with all your heart and soul according to all
that I command you today, you and your sons, 3
then the LORD your
God will restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you, and will
gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered
you. 4 “If your outcasts are at the ends of the earth, from there the
LORD your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you back. 5 "The LORD your God will bring you into
the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will
prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers. 6 “Moreover the LORD your
God will circumcise your
heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all
your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live. 7 “The LORD
your God will inflict all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate
you, who persecuted you. 8 “And you shall again obey the LORD, and observe all His commandments
which I command you today. 9 "Then
the LORD your God will prosper you abundantly in all the work of your hand, in
the offspring of your body and in the offspring of your cattle and in the produce
of your ground, for the LORD will again rejoice over you for good, just as He
rejoiced over your fathers; 10 if you
obey the LORD your God to keep His commandments and His statutes which are
written in this book of the law, if you turn to the LORD your God with all your
heart and soul (Deut. 30:1-10).”
Jeremiah saw the things that he described in the book of
Lamentations and God wrote in the Law that these things would happen, but then
we come to Deuteronomy 30:1-10 and we see that in the Law God also promised to
bring His people out of captivity after He was done chastening them. Now this happened 70 years after they first
went into captivity around 535 BC.
However the same thing would happen to them again in 70 AD and this time
they would be living in other countries for almost 2000 years, however when God
brought His people back to Israel in May of 1948, Ezekiel writes that they
would not yet have their spirit in them, but this will happen during the latter
days of the tribulation and what Paul writes about them in the book of Romans
will come true when he says “all Israel will be saved.”
Now as we go back to our text in Lamentation we see that
the people are crying out to the Lord for help, and that the Lord would be
merciful on them, which is what they truly needed. God is a God of mercy, but also a just God
who demonstrates His wrath, but now they need His mercy after His wrath had
been demonstrated. Dr. Wiersbe writes “God’s
people don’t live on explanations; they live on promises.” It takes faith to believe the promises of
God.
It is difficult to see children suffering, and these
children who lived in Jerusalem at this time surely suffered very much. During World War Two there were many Jewish
children who suffered at the hands of the Germans, and this also was a
difficult thing to endure for their parents.
I know a bit about having a child suffer as my son was born with a bad
heart and had to endure two different operations to have his heart
repaired. I remember looking at him
after his major surgery when his heart was removed from his body and repaired
and I saw tears coming from his eyes but no sound coming from his mouth for it
was taped shut with a respirator in it.
That was difficult for me to endure, but by the grace and mercy of God
he is fine today and has three children of his own.
Dr. Wiersbe concludes with the following words: “God’s ear is open to the cries of His
people, but He doesn’t answer until His hand is finished with the discipline He
promised (Heb. 12). ‘The Lord shall
judge His people, It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living
God’ (Heb. 10:30-31).”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: Our pastor a few
weeks back talked about the wrath of the Lord coming upon His children, not in
the same way that His wrath will come upon those who have not believed in Him
for salvation, but wrath in the kind of way that the writer of the Hebrews
speaks of in Hebrews chapter twelve. My
prayer is that I will not have to come under His wrath, but live a life that is
pleasing to Him, but if I fail to do that all of the time then my prayer will
be for mercy.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Life a life that is pleasing to the Lord.
Memory verses for the
week: Colossians 3:1-8.
1Therefore if you have been
raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated
at the right hand of God. 2 Set you mind
on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. 3 For you have died and your life is hidden
with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who
is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in
glory. Therefore consider the members of
your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and
greed, which amounts to idolatry. 6 For
it is because of these things that the wrath of God has come upon the sons of
disobedience; 7 and in them you once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you also put them all aside: anger,
wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Cut it off” (Matt. 5:30.” I promised to explain about this answer so
let us look at Matthew 5:30 first of all “"If your right hand makes you
stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one
of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell.” Jesus is speaking of a spiritual amputation,
not a physical amputation.
Today’s Bible
question: “Who said ‘Come see a man
which told me all things that I ever did’?”
Answer in our next SD.
9/12/2014 9:43 AM
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